Being a small business is like being a surfer, you’re either riding waves so high it makes you giddy, or just trying to breathe through a lot of water! We’ve been in business now for over 3 years, and over that time, we’ve definitely improved the way we do things, but there are several key tools that we use that we couldn’t do without now. These tools help us no-end to keep on top of the ever growing beast that is Webtogs.

This is our list of the ones we feel to be essential in our day to day lives, both as a small business or from a personal productivity point of view. There are many more that could have gone in, but these are the tops as they say. So in the best chart tradition, here’s our rundown from 5 through to number 1 (cue music)

TWEETDECK Just two of us use it in the office, but it’s the social media hub we’ve come to rely on. Twitter, linkedin, Facebook all come in to here and it helps us keep an eye on customer services issues, lets us spread news about whats going on at Webtogs, and in the wider outdoor world, as well as enabling us to chat with our customers. Flexibility in following people, managing Twitter lists and our FB pages all mean it gets our vote for managing our presence out on the web.

EVERNOTE The Daddy of all note systems, we love One Note, but as we work hard at home as well as at work, having a notebook that synchronises between home, phone and office is invaluable. We love the ability to tag everything to the nth degree and there are some great examples out there such as Steve Horners use for storing routes. I also love the ability to photo our ramblings on the whiteboard, if only it was able to then decipher my Doctor style writing……

37 SIGNALS The guys at 37 signals have produced some awesome tools, but the ones we use are Highrise and Basecamp. Highrise is a contact management software and we use it to store details of all the people we deal with, notes to do with them and ourselves. The ability to access everywhere is crucial. Basecamp is a seriously simple project management tool, that although not favoured by all, helps us keep track of our larger development projects. Both are seriously easy to use, available everywhere and incredibly useful.

DROPBOX A small piece of genius that we have been using for a while now. Automatically installs within your documents on either your smartphone, Mac, PC or tablet  and then auto-syncs anything you put in there between those devices. You now have the ability to specify what you want synchronised within your folders, and it’s ability to just quietly do it’s job without thinking about it is testament to how easy it is to use. So easy I now use it as backup for my parents!

SKYPE Simply put, we couldn’t live without it now. This is our key tool for communicating as a business as we have a warehouse, an office, and people working remotely. Video calling is brilliant, file sharing a doddle, calls are free and we can also use it as backup for taking calls from customers.

So, this is what we couldn’t do without, what’s your experience, and what would make it in to your top 5 list of seriously handy tools ?

Next year sees them stepping up a gear and so you have the Obi 1 and Obi 2 tents that weight a paltry 900g and 1.2Kg in their lowest weight incarnations, the Gogo goes from 900 g to 600g through the use of their new Osmo breathable fabric and you have a brand new 4 season mountain tent that sleeps 3, the Alti, weighing just 3.2kg.

Check out our preview on You Tube below. Personally I can’t wait to get hold of an Obi but which ones from next year tickles your fancy?

We already show the Name of the Bag, Brand and Price in a Grid view but not the Comfort Temperature, Weight and Pack size which are key elements to any buying decision. So in order to make this information much more easily available we have come up with an up date to the Grid view. So the new views will look a bit like the one below. When this is done it will look like the update we did for tents a few weeks back.

With that in mind we’ve introduced a pre-paid returns label. Each invoice we send out now contains a pre-paid label. If you’ve mislaid your invoice you can also log into your account area on Webtogs.co.uk and print a returns label direct from our website. Whilst we now pay royal mail direct for the cost of your return postage, we don’t currently offer free returns. In all cases, the cost of returns postage is £2.20. This is a bulk rate we’ve negotiated with Royal Mail and should prove a fair bit cheaper than taking the parcel to the post office yourself.If you return an item to us, under our Zero Hassle 60 Day Returns service, we will either deduct the postage cost (£2.20) from any refund we issue, or in the case of exchanges, charge your original payment card for the postage costs.

Occasionally we get things wrong at our end. If you need to return something to Webtogs HQ, through no fault of yours, we will cover all postage costs with these labels. Please note: our pre-paid returns label is only for our UK customers. If you live outside the UK (including ROI, Channel Islands, etc, etc) you will need to cover the cost of any returns postage yourself.

The show itself was pretty good with a fair selection of brands and destinations all on display. I particuarly liked the bushcraft area, the presenters were excellent and the community vibe in the area was the best at the show. Having had a pootle around the show, I sat down at the back of the Cicerone walking stage to watch Simon King presenting the awards. Butterflies grew as we duly got to the best Online retailer, at which point my jaw dropped down to sea level when the Webtogs name was read out in first place!!

We never expected to do as well as we did for this our first year being nominated and we just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who voted for us. We’re super chuffed that we have won and we promise that we will carry on delivering the best online experience, the best products and the best customer service of any outdoors retailer. It means a great deal to us that we have made it on to so many peoples radar as the place to shop for outdoor gear.

So thanks again to the Ramblers and Walk magazine, all their readers and all our customers, we’re deeply humbled you all think we are the best online retailer in outdoor – Cheers!

I’ll blog later about some of the days out but what was great was meeting up with Keith & James for a stroll up Pen y Fan, organised to try and get James a little fitter!

It was fantastic to actually have some proper hill days for the first time in absolutely ages and along with a trip up to Llyn Fawr I felt like the hills were not such far out of my reach, even more so as coming back it took us just two hours from the Eastern edge of the Brecons. I’m already planning my next jaunt….

I’ve also been thinking more and more about our Customers experience when phoning Webtogs. I have had plenty of experiences when ringing a company (BT definitely springs to mind!) where I know that they are reading from scripts. On some occasions that’s absolutely fine, take my credit card company for example. If I want to pay bills or change my address, I don’t mind a script but the real issue for me is when you need to solve a customers problem. Recent research in the banking industry shows that 9 out of 10 people hate it when they feel they are having a script read out to them and I am definitely one of those 9! They leave you frustrated as you do not feel you are being listened to, and on some occasions, they give an answer which isn’t relevant to the question or problem you have raised. It also sucks the morale out of teams as they have no input in to a call and may as well be on Valium for all the enthusiasm it garners. So aside from our greeting, it’s one of the reasons why I will never give scripts to our Customer Services team. I actively encourage our guys to listen, chat, bring a part of themselves to the conversation and go at the customers pace.